Category: Consumer VoIP
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Silicon Alley Insider: How Comcast Ate Vonage’s Lunch
Continue Reading: Silicon Alley Insider: How Comcast Ate Vonage’s LunchFascinating chart out of Silicon Alley Insider today showing the incredible growth Comcast has had in terms of IP phone subscribers versus that of Vonage:I doubt the chart is a huge surprise for anyone following the industry, but it still does make for an interesting graphic. Despite all the advertising money that Vonage can throw out there, Comcast and the other cable providers have the inherent advantage that they can easily offer powerful “triple-play bundles” of cable TV, Internet access and phone service.
Comcast is no longer my provider (Time-Warner services Keene, NH, where I live.), but when I lived in Burlington, VT, we had Comcast for Internet access and Verizon for phone (and we didn’t have anyone for TV, since we don’t watch it). The offers that Comcast kept sending us, though, encouraging us to switch, were quite compelling. The amount I paid for Internet access would have been lower if I had either phone or TV with Comcast, and even lower if I had all three.
If we actually watched TV and therefore wanted cable TV, the economics of the “triple-play” would be very hard to beat… so it’s no surprise at all to me to…
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Define “VoIP” – and then we can debate whether it is dead!
Continue Reading: Define “VoIP” – and then we can debate whether it is dead!There is a fundamental problem with the “VoIP is dead” debate continuing to rage across the VoIP/communications part of the blogosphere (see Alec Saunders part 1 and part 2, Jon Arnold, Andy Abramson, Ken Camp, Jeff Pulver part 1 and part 2, Om Malik, Shidan Gouran, Ted Wallingford, Dameon Welch-Abernathy (PhoneBoy), Rich Tehrani and a zillion others…)Aswath Rao and Luca Filigheddu came closest to the mark in their posts. The fundamental problem with this entire debate is simply this:
Define “VoIP”?
As I discussed in an Emerging Tech Talk video podcast I put up this morning, there are a range of definitions you could give to “VoIP”, including, but not limited to, the following:
- The underlying infrastructure, a.k.a. the “plumbing” – the mechanisms, protocols, etc. that are used for the transport of voice/video/etc. over IP. Things like SIP, H.323, RTP, various codecs, etc.
- Consumer “PSTN line replacement” services – Offerings like those of Vonage and so many others where the basic idea is that you can get cheaper telephone charges by going over the Internet and getting rid of your local landline. Also called “pure play” VoIP by some or “VoIP arbitrage” by others.
- Computer-to-computer/softphone offerings, often coming from the…
- The underlying infrastructure, a.k.a. the “plumbing” – the mechanisms, protocols, etc. that are used for the transport of voice/video/etc. over IP. Things like SIP, H.323, RTP, various codecs, etc.
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Is Craigslist blocking VoIP, Prepaid phone numbers in anti-spam effort?
Continue Reading: Is Craigslist blocking VoIP, Prepaid phone numbers in anti-spam effort?Is Craigslist really blocking phone numbers from VoIP service providers or pre-paid cell phones as an anti-spam measure?Last night over on the VoIPinsider blog, Cory Andrews wrote that Craigslist is apparently blocking VoIP or prepaid cellular numbers as part of their anti-spam measures. Now I’m a huge fan of Craigslist and we’ve sold lots of items (including, now, our house) via Craigslist. But we’ve also seen the spam out there and personally been contacted in response to one of our ads by a sleazy individual who was trying to scam us out of money. Techdirt, in fact, says that the battle has been lost and that the spammers are taking over Craigslist. While it wasn’t that dreadful in the Vermont Craigslist area, there certainly was some spam and you can understand the folks there wanting to do all they can to block spammers.
But to block VoIP service providers? Just as increasingly large numbers of users move over to VoIP services?
THE APPARENT ACTIONS
It seems a rather draconian – and misguided – measure. As the VoIP Insider article states:
A few months back, Craiglist instituted a telephone verification process that places an automated outbound call to a user placing…
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Four reasons I am choosing NOT to cut the landline cord
Continue Reading: Four reasons I am choosing NOT to cut the landline cordTwelve days ago I asked the question, “Do I cut the landline cord and move my new home phone number into the cloud?“, and the responses have been great to read. Today, I can write the answer…No, I will NOT cut the cord.
Around noon today my landline in Keene should be installed by Fairpoint Communications (who recently bought all of Verizon’s landline business in Maine, NH and Vermont).
Why did I finally give in and get a landline installed? Four reasons:
FAX – Unbelievably to me, perhaps the primary reason for keeping a landline is an old archaic technology that I absolutely can’t stand… fax. This was brought home to me during the process of closing on the purchase of our Keene home and the sale of our Burlington home. As much as we may hate it, there are still some transactions that require fax. There were documents that had to be faxed to the bank. Documents that had to be faxed to lawyers. Documents that had to be faxed to real estate agents. To contractors.
To a techie like me, it was unbelievably annoying not to be able to simply use email. But in many cases,…
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Do I cut the landline cord and move my new home phone number into the cloud?
Continue Reading: Do I cut the landline cord and move my new home phone number into the cloud?UPDATE – May 21: Today I posted my answer to the question…
In our new home, do I get a land line?
Or do I move our home phone number into “the cloud”?
We’re closing on our home in Keene, NH, next Thursday and as we get set with the utilities that is one of the key questions on my mind. Do I actually “cut the cord” and NOT sign up for a land line with Verizon/Fairpoint?[1]
On one level, we don’t need it. My wife and I both have our cell phones. Our daughter is six and isn’t yet at the age to make phone calls. I work in the world of voice-over-IP and can certainly get a solution there.
Why should we get a land line?
ADVANTAGES OF A LAND LINE
In thinking about this, it seems to me there are the following reasons to get a land line:
911 – UPDATE: As PhoneBoy reminded me in a comment, the overarching reason for having a landline is 911! A landline is the only guaranteed way to dial 911 and have emergency services arrive at your house. Precisely because it is tied to your geographical location it does indeed…
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AOL launches OpenView API and gives us half a phone connection…
Continue Reading: AOL launches OpenView API and gives us half a phone connection…Does accepting SIP connections at your SIP proxy constitute an “API”? Does providing SIP termination services to the PSTN constitute an “API”?Those were the questions I found myself asking after AOL announced yesterday their “Open Voice API” (also see CNET article). Since I work with voice application platforms, I’m always interested in new voice APIs and naturally had to check it out.
WHAT IT IS
I have to admit it took some time to figure out what the “Open Voice Program” really is, even after reading the program page and the accompanying blog post. Largely I think the issue was that I was looking for something more.
So here’s what is going on. As part of their “AOL Voice Services“, AOL has a service called “AIM Call Out“. This allows a user of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to make outbound calls from their AIM client to the regular phone numbers on the PSTN for competitive rates (under 2 cents a minute here in the US).
From a network topology point-of-view, what happens with the call is that the call goes from your AIM client to the SIP gateway on the edge of AOL’s network across some SIP…
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Jajah to provide PSTN connectivity for Yahoo!Voice!
Continue Reading: Jajah to provide PSTN connectivity for Yahoo!Voice!Yahoo! announced today that they are outsourcing all PSTN connectivity services for Yahoo!Messenger over to the startup Jajah. This is a huge win for Jajah who also announced today that it has hit over 10 million users in two years. Congrats to the Jajah team for the win!Two parts of the release explain a bit about what is going on:
The “Phone In” and “Phone Out” service will enable consumers to make high-quality, low-cost PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC voice calls over the JAJAH network to more than 200 countries using Yahoo! Messenger, the leading instant messenger application in the United States with nearly 97 million users worldwide (comScore, February 2008).
and:
Since 2006, Yahoo! Messenger users have been able to use “Phone In” and “Phone Out” to make and receive voice calls on their PC to and from landline and mobile phones. With low rates and premium voice quality, users can talk for hours and save on their phone bill. This deal means JAJAH will take over the provision of the telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care for Yahoo!’s premium voice users who make and receive voice calls through Yahoo! Messenger.
So essentially Yahoo is centralizing all the PSTN interconnection for Yahoo!Voice…
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Given that we already have Jajah, do we really need nonoh?
Continue Reading: Given that we already have Jajah, do we really need nonoh?Given that there was a service called Jajah, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would come up with a competitor called nonoh whose main point seems to be “We are cheaper than Jajah”! Indeed, if Jajah could run a table like this on their website:
You can pretty much expect that a site like nonoh is going to run the inevitable comparison to Jajah:
The race to the bottom and the commoditization of all phone calls (at $0) continues… who will get to the bottom first? (And what, exactly, will their business plan be?)
Tom Keating has more info about the difference between Nonoh and Jajah.
Technorati tags: voip, jahah, nonoh -
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Vonage drops below $2/share!
Continue Reading: Vonage drops below $2/share!Russell Shaw has the details: “Did you ever REALLY think Vonage stock would go below $2 a share?“
I’ve not written here much about Vonage or the many other “consumer VoIP” players. Partly because I guess at the end of the day I just don’t find their proposition all that compelling. Partly because the lack of voice security in so many of the consumer VoIP players just really offends me. Partly because I don’t see them really as all that “disruptive” because their positioning really seems to be “We are cheaper than the other guys”. Yaawwwwwwwn.
Note to Vonage and friends: Someone will always be cheaper.
Technorati tags: vonage -
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VoIPUser.org Explains How to Build a VoIP Server Provider Network
Continue Reading: VoIPUser.org Explains How to Build a VoIP Server Provider NetworkDean Elwood over at VoIPUser.org put up a post yesterday entitled "How to Build a VoIP Network" in which he goes into precisely what is needed to set yourself up as a VoIP Service Provider (or "Internet Telephony Service Provider" (ISTP)). Given that Dean’s been involved with this through VoIPuser.org, he’s definitely got some credibility. As he says, he wrote the piece because:
We see a lot of threads on VoIP User from people who want to be the next Niklas Zennstrom (and fair enough, we hope you succeed) asking what is required to build a VoIP network.
Often these questions are from users who have a basic technical understanding of how it all works, but no real experience of building networks, or telcoms experience with the good old PSTN.He goes on to offer these seven rules:
1. if you’re a marketing genius, you have a greater chance of success with your new VoIP company than if you are a technical genius.
2. Using the internet to route calls does not mean that everything in the VoIP world runs on Intel *nix.
3. It is going to break at some point. Ensure you have redundancy.
4. The transition…
